This weeks Macbreak Weekly has guest Patrick Wilson, the drummer from Weezer. During the show they do talk a bit about technology and Mac’s but a good portion of it turned into a great interview with him. He has a lot to say and I have to say, he says it well. I’m not a great fan of Weezer but he has a lot of insight and it’s a great listen.

The DS-1220 is great. It was dead easy to setup and has caused me to trouble at all. I installed Fedora 8 in the days leading up to the delivery the the DS-1220 based solely on the fact that I saw something on the web that said the controller card worked in Fedora. Come to find out the drivers for the card are actually available in the current kernel and most distributions are coming with the driver available as a module. I did nothing to setup or install the Norco DS-1220 at all. Read more...(2129 words, estimated 8:31 mins reading time)

I can only imagine the horror for your average American family! Having to spend less than you make! Putting money in savings! Say it ain’t so! Could there be anything worse that could possibly happen? :: Looks around ::

So, We grabbed the two drums I have and stuff the end of the sump pump hose into the barrel. I thought that we might fill a barrel over the course of a few days. I had been monitoring the amount of water flow from the pump for a few days and while it was a good bit of water it just didn’t seem like all that much. Little did I know we could move 55 gallons in about 90 minutes.

The house we live in was built in 1899 and has a dirt basement. The water pours down the walls when it rains, and especially in the spring as the snow melts. We usually just let this all run out into the yard. I may not even need to gather rain water this year. If I can get enough barrels I might be able to just stock up now. If my math is correct we are pumping nearly 900 gallons of water out of the basement every 24 hours. That is nothing to scoff at. I’m going to need bigger drums! Read more...(184 words, estimated 44 secs reading time)

Well, up here in the northeast we still have a bit of snow on the ground and it’s still dropping well below freezing at night so it’s much to early to start planting, but it’s time for my winter thinking and planning to start coming together. The first step is finding a source of water to use to water the garden. We have a well that works great to meet our needs as a family but general consensus is that it won’t be sufficient to water the garden as well. To that end I need to get water from somewhere else.. collecting rain seems like the obvious solution.

I have begun gathering 55 gallon barrels made of plastic to act as holding chambers but the process of getting the rain to the barrels is proving to be somewhat difficult. Clearly putting the barrel under the downspout is the obvious choice but aside from the aesthetic drawbacks most of our downspouts are either on a part of the property that is steeply angled or in some way inaccessible for a barrel. Perhaps I will put 5 gallon barrels under the spouts and jocky the water to a central holding area. Not an automatic process.. Read more...(399 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)